longislandmusicscenefandomcom-20200214-history
Flanders
Flanders was a band from Kings Park from 1995-1996 which was the first few line ups of The Microwave Orphans. The band started in the summer of 1995 after the breakup of Janeless; Matt Roren and Ian Smith decided to start a punk band, with Matt on bass and vocals and Ian on guitar they needed a drummer, so they recruited Matt's cousin Jason Deford to fill that position. They began to practice in Jay's garage and recruited former bandmate Tom Stevenson on 2nd guitar. Ater a couple months Tom left to go back to singing with his new band Flu. As the cold month's came in they moved practice down to Matt's basement AKA Rubber Chicken Studios, where they recorded demos as a 3 piece, for songs like Cul ,Fuscul and Judgment Day , realizing he could not play bass and sing at the same time (hell he could barely play bass period) they decided to look for a bassist. One day after school Matt brought Jay Foley to practice with him stating he was Flanders new bassist. Jay was a uber goth kid (fishnets, lipstick, black scraggly hair and a big hat that made him look like The Undertaker), upon first site Jay and Ian thought Matt was crazy for bringing him into the band... and maybe they were right, but he owned a bass, an amp and he liked Flipper and that was all Matt needed to know. They wrote some new songs including Brisket, Backpack, an early version of We All Love Each Other, The Goat, and Instrumento and worked on cover versions of Flipper's "Ever ", The Dead Milkmen's "I Hate You, I Love You", Nirvana's "In Bloom" and a punked up version of The Penguins ' classic "Earth Angel ". Jay had booked them on a show at The Old First Church in his former homestead of Huntington, the band was equally excited and concerned they only had a handful of songs and weren't very tight. At one practice they were jamming on Ever and Jay started to smash his bass into his tiny Gorilla amp, he busted the amp to pieces and created a power shortage in Matt's house. Matt began screaming at him and in one swift motion (no joke, this seriously happened) Jay tore all 4 strings off his bass and stormed out. This incident plus the fact that they were getting threats that if Jay played with them several Huntington kids were going to pelt them with soap and other things due to their hatred of Jay (these kids included future members of Contra ); they had decided they needed to get rid of him. Matt called in help from the bassist of his former band Gonorrhea - Nick Bifulci to fill in on bass. Without telling Jay they taught Nick some songs they would play at the show including Brisket, Backpack, Ever, Earth Angel, Cul and I Saw Her In The Shower which was a song Matt wrote in 8th grade and had played with his brother Jon. The day of the show was here they drove to The Old First Church without calling or picking up Jay, he left a very angry/sad message on Matt's answering machine which can be heard at the begining of The Microwave Orphans first demo DEMON. This show included performances by Water Color , Evolution , 714 , Redko and the last show of Bor , although listed on this flyer Garden Variety and Milhouse did not actually end up playing. This would be the only show played under the name Flanders as they found that another band had just released a 7" under that name.